Departments across the City of Guelph are moving towards greater collection, use and sharing of data. A “smart city” uses technology and data to help manage the city, from traffic to energy, and water use to healthcare.

While cities have a long history of using data to support decision-making, technological advances have dramatically increased the volume and variety of data available and raise the possibility of this new wealth of data being used to make evermore complex decisions.

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The GuelphLab hosted 25 City of Guelph staff for discussions with Kurtis McBride, CEO of Miovision, a smart city technology company, and Dr. Rozita Dara, School of Computer Science, University of Guelph, about the possibilities and challenges of “Smart Cities.”

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Highlights:

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• Cities face a choice - should data (and the systems that manage them) be “open” or “closed.” A closed system keeps all the data and analysis inside a single piece of software / system - these are often associated with the large technology companies like IBM. “Open” systems make data openly available, allowing other organizations, citizens etc. to use it, and potentially create additional value.

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• The value of data is only realized once systems are created that turn the data into useful insights and action. Implementation of these "Decision Support Systems” face a number of challenges - including the quality of data available. Data preparation fatigue and the "90 percent rule” - cleaning and preparing data to be used in any “decision support system” is often 90 percent of the work.

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• Resources

  • Academic paper on Smart Cities

  • About Miovision